CATEGORIES OF ARTICLES
The Editors invite contributions to the following sections of the Journal:- Original articles
- Review articles
- Short reports
- Clinical case reports
- Editorials
- Selected summaries
- Speaking for myself (ourselves)
- Correspondence
- Images / Video
- Medical education
- Medical ethics
- Medicine and society
- Clinico-pathological conferences
- Everyday practice
- How to do it
- Indian medical institutions
- Obituaries
- News from here and there
- Classics in Indian Medicine
Original articles: These scientific reports give results of original research. These should have a structured abstract (Background, Methods, Results and Conclusions) of maximum 300 words. The article should follow the IMRAD (Introduction, Methods, Results and Discussion) format and have a maximum of 3000 words and 5 tables or figures. Manuscripts exceeding these limits may require justification. Reports of randomized controlled trials should conform to the CONSORT statement on reporting such trials (www.consort-statement.org). We encourage reports of diagnostic tests to be accompanied by the STARD flow diagram and checklist (www.clinchem.org/cgi/content/full/49/1/1), reports of meta-analyses of randomized trials to be accompanied by the QUOROM flow diagram and checklist (www.consort-statement.org/QUOROM.pdf), and meta-analyses of observational studies to be accompanied by the MOOSE checklist (www.consort-statement.org/MOOSE.pdf).
Speaking for myself (ourselves): A personal viewpoint on any aspect of healthcare in India. This provides a forum for airing individual views on different facets of debatable and topical subjects in healthcare (approx. 1500 to 2000 words). Though references may be provided where appropriate, the focus is on personal views and interpretations. No abstract is required.
Correspondence: This includes readers’ comments on articles published in the Journal during the previous 6 months. Short studies, observations and opinions may also be submitted (approx. 300 to 500 words with a maximum of 1 table or figure and 10 references). No abstract is required. Letters written in response to articles published in the Journal should be titled “Re: (Full title of the article being referred to)”
Classics in Indian Medicine: In this section, a previously published important paper is reprinted with a brief biographical sketch of the author. A current authority in the relevant field provides a brief summary of the article’s impact on the practice of medicine since its publication. The Journal invites suggestions for such articles. These should include the full bibliographic details of the originally published article.
| Article Type | Abstract | Main text | Figures/Tables | Others |
| OA | Structured, 300 words |
IMRAD; 3000 words |
5 | – |
| Reviews | Structured, 300 words |
IMRAD; 4000 words |
5 | – |
| Short reports | Structured, 300 words |
IMRAD; 500 words |
3 | 20 references |
| Case report | Non-structured, 300 words |
Introduction, The case, Discussion; 1200 words |
2 | 10 references |
| Editorials | No | 1200 words | 2 | 12-15 references |
| Selected summaries | No | 1000 words | None | – |
| Speaking for myself | No | 2000 words | – | – |
| Correspondence | No | 500 words | 1 | – |
| Medical education | Structured, 300 words |
2000 words | – | – |
| Medical Ethics | No | 2500 words | – | – |
| Medicine and Society | No | 2000 words | – | – |
| Everyday practice | Non-structured, 300 words |
2000 words | – | – |
| How to do it | No | 1500 words | – | – |
PREPARATION AND SUBMISSION OF MANUSCRIPTS
Manuscripts should be prepared in accordance with the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly work in Medical Journals. of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) (last updated in January 2025, www.icmje.org). A recent issue of The National Medical Journal of India should be consulted while preparing manuscripts.
We require all manuscripts to be submitted at https://www.nmji.in/ The preferred file format is Microsoft Word document (doc, docx file extensions). Acceptable formats for pictures, photographs, and figures are JPG, GIF and TIF and acceptable video format is MP4 format. All files should be formatted using British English spellings and 12-point Times New Roman font. All files should be formatted for A4 sized paper with a 1-inch margin all around. All pages should be numbered consecutively.
Each manuscript received by the journal is assigned a manuscript number and acknowledged. Please provide the manuscript number in all future communications. If you do not receive an acknowledgement within a week, please send us an email at nmji@nmji.in. Efforts are made to convey an editorial decision to authors at the earliest, usually within 3 months of submission.
One author must be identified as the corresponding author. The Journal will communicate with the corresponding author if any clarification or information is needed. Comments from peer reviewers will be transmitted to the corresponding author. It is expected that the corresponding author will communicate/respond to the Journal’s queries after having consulted all the authors and will assume responsibility for all such communication as well as for the work as a whole.
MANUSCRIPT ARRANGEMENT AND CONTENTS
Manuscript should be arranged as follows:File 1: Covering Letter/Title page file:
Content included in this file will NOT be available to the peer-reviewers. Any material that identifies the authors should be included in this file. Ethics Committee letters or other material/explanations that may be requested by the editorial office as a part of the manuscript evaluation, that is not meant to be sent for peer-review, should be provided in this file.
The covering letter should outline the importance of the paper and its appropriateness for publication in the Journal. It should specify the section of the Journal for which the submitted article is to be considered. It should also explain, with reasons, if there is any deviation from the journal guidelines for manuscript preparation. If the work has been previously published in part or whole (e.g. as an abstract or proceedings of a conference), this must be stated. Any conflicts of interest, or their absence, must be stated in writing (see below and www.icmje.org).
The title page should contain the title, short title, names of all the authors (without degrees or diplomas), names and full location of the departments and institutions where the work was performed, name of the corresponding author, acknowledgment of financial support and abbreviations used. Superscripted numbers should be used after each author’s name and the department and institution corresponding to each number should be specified on the page. Names of authors should appear in the order of authorship (see below).
The short title should not exceed 60 characters (including inter-word spaces). It will be used as a running head.
The name, telephone and complete e-mail and postal addresses of the author to whom communications and requests for offprints are to be sent should be mentioned in the title page.
In general, the use of abbreviations is discouraged unless they help in improving the readability of the text. The expanded form of each abbreviation should precede its first use in the text unless it is a standard unit of measurement.
Abstract: The structured abstract (300 words) should be divided into four sections: Background, Methods, Results and Conclusion(s). It should be a concise and accurate summary of the article and should not contain abbreviations, tables, figures, footnotes or references. It should not draw conclusions stronger or more expansive than those in the body of the paper. Briefly, the Background should explain why the study was done, the methods provide how the study was done, the results provide the salient results along with important data and the conclusions briefly highlight the message of the study. For non-structured abstracts, no subheadings are required.
- Study design
- Setting
- Selection of participants
- Interventions
- Methods of measurement
- Data collection and processing
- Loss of data such as dropouts or patients lost to follow up
- Outcome measures: primary and secondary
- Statistical methods used
- Ethical guidelines followed by the investigators
The following information should be given:
- The statistical universe, i.e. the population from which the sample for the study is selected
- Method of selecting the sample (subjects, animals, etc. from the statistical universe)
- Method of allocating the subjects into different groups
- Statistical methods used for presentation and analysis of data (e.g. mean and standard deviation values or percentage values), and statistical tests (e.g. Student’s t test, chi-square test, analysis of variance, non-parametric tests and multivariate techniques)
- Exact p values should be provided.
- Confidence intervals for measurements should be provided wherever appropriate.
- The software package (name and version) used for statistical analysis should be specified.
Results:
These should be concise and include only the tables and figures necessary to enhance understanding of the text. Results should be presented in a logical, sequential order that parallels the organization of the methods section. The text should be used to highlight the most important aspects of the figures and tables, and to convey unique information. Data presented in tables and figures should not be duplicated in the text. Drug names, wherever used, should be generic. If the use of proprietary names is deemed a must for the study, generic names should be mentioned in parentheses.
Units of Measurement:
When reporting values for commonly studied components such as cholesterol, blood glucose, blood urea and creatinine, report the value in SI units with traditional units given in parentheses. Temperature should be expressed in degrees Celsius and blood pressure in mmHg.
Discussion:
The discussion should summarize how the study findings add to the current knowledge, provide explanations for the findings, compare the study’s findings with available studies, discuss the limitations of the study and the implications for future research. Only those published articles directly relevant to interpreting the results and placing them in context should be referenced. This section should conclude with a brief summary statement. The conclusion should be based on and justified by the results of the study. The particular relevance of the results to healthcare in India should be stressed. Conclusions regarding cost-benefit should be drawn only if a specific economic analysis formed a part of the study design. A separate Conclusions section is not required.
References:
These should conform to the ICMJE style (ww.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/uniform_requirements.html, www.icmje.org). References should be numbered in the order in which they appear in the text and these numbers should be inserted above the lines (superscripted) on each occasion the reference is cited (e.g. Sinha12 confirmed other reports13,14…). References included at the end of a sentence or part of a sentence should be placed after the punctuation mark. References cited only in tables or in legends to figures should be numbered in accordance with the sequence established by the first identification in the text of the particular table or figure. Avoid using abstracts as references. For papers accepted but not yet published mention the name of the journal, the year of publication and add ‘in press’ in parentheses. Information from papers submitted for publication but not accepted should be cited in the text as ‘unpublished observations’ with written permission from the source. Avoid citing a ‘personal communication’ unless it is essential; such citations must list in parentheses in the text the name of the person and date of communication. Written permission, obtained from the author of such communications for their use in the manuscript, must be submitted to the Journal. Do not include ‘personal communications’ in the list of references.
At the end of the article, the full list of references should include the names of authors, the full title of the journal article or book chapters; the title of journals abbreviated according to the Index Medicus style (www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/uniform_requirements.html) the year of publication, the volume number and the first and final page numbers of the article or chapter. If there are six or fewer authors in the study being cited, the names of all the authors should be given. If there are more than six authors, the names of the first six authors should be given followed by et al. The authors should check that the references are accurate; lack of accuracy may result in the rejection of an otherwise adequate manuscript. Some examples of common forms of references are:
Journal articles
Paintal AS. Impulses in vagal afferent fibres from specific pulmonary deflation receptors. The response of there receptors to phenylguanide, potato S-hydroxytryptamine and their role in respiratory and cardiovascular reflexes. Q J Exp Physiol 1955;40:89–111.
Books
Stansfeld AG. Lymph node biopsy interpretation. New York:Churchill Livingstone; 1985.
Chapters in Books
Strong MS. Recurrent respiratory papillomatosis. In: Evans JNG (ed). Scott Brown’s otolaryngology. Vol. 6. Paediatric otolaryngology. London:Butterworths; 1987:466–70.
- Health Sciences Library, University of Buffalo, NY. Available at http://ublib.buffalo.edu/libraries/units/hsl/infores/biomed.htm (accessed on 12 Nov 2004).
- List of databases in medicine and related areas. Karolinska Institute, University Library. Available at http://kib.ki.se/tools/base/index_en.asp (accessed on 12 Nov 2004).
Tables:
All tables must be sequentially cited in the text as Table 1, Table 2 etc and must be included in the Main text file. Tables should be typed in double space, each table on a separate page with the table number (in Arabic numerals) and title above the table, and explanatory notes below the table. Tables should be so arranged that comparisons of interest are horizontal (across columns) and from left to right. The numbers of observations for each column or row (n) and marginal totals should be provided where appropriate. All abbreviations and symbols in the table must be explained in the footnote(s) to the table, even if the expanded forms have already been mentioned in the text. The units of measure must be mentioned. For footnotes in tables, the following symbols should be used in sequence of appearance: *, †, ‡, §, ||, , **, ††, ‡‡, …
File 3: Figures (if any):
Figures: All figures must be sequentially cited in the text as Fig 1, Fig 2 etc. All graphs are considered as figures. High-quality figures should be uploaded. Avoid annotating/writing on the figures. Areas to be highlighted may be marked with symbols (*, #, arrows, arrow-heads etc.) with their explanation provided in the legend to the figure. All photomicrographs should indicate the magnification of the print. Avoid using colours/shading in figures and graphs unless absolutely essential. Patterns may be used instead of colours, where needed. Colour illustrations will be accepted ONLY if they make a contribution to the understanding of the manuscript.
Legends to figures: These should be typed in double space on a separate page of the Main Text file, and figure numbers (in Arabic numerals), should correspond with the order in which the figures are presented in the text. The legend must include enough information to permit interpretation of the figure without reference to the text. Any labels or abbreviations within the figure must be explained in the legend.
Supplementary material should include tables/figures/data that will be available online only and not be printed in the print-version of the journal. This will be available to reviewers during the peer-review process.
JOURNAL POLICIES
Authorship
An ‘author’ is someone who has made substantive intellectual contributions to a study.
In accordance with ICMJE guidelines (www.icmje.org), authorship credit requires all the following conditions to be met.
- Substantial contributions to conception and design, or acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data;
- Drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content; and,
- Final approval of the version to be published; and,
- Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.
All authors should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for the content. All authors must sign an undertaking accepting responsibility for the submitted manuscript. Authors are required to state their exact contribution to the study; the Journal may print this information. The order of authorship should be decided by all the authors. The journal strongly discourages alterations in the sequence or deletion/addition of authors at any time after submission of the manuscript.
A conflict of interest exists when a financial or personal relationship of the author may inappropriately influence his or her actions. Conflicts may be personal, commercial, political, academic, or financial. Some examples of financial conflicts of interest include employment, research funding (received or pending), stock or share ownership, payment for lectures or travel, consultancies and non-monetary support. Conflicts, or their absence, must be stated in writing by all authors at the time of submission of the article. The Journal may use information disclosed in conflict of interest and financial interest statements as a basis for editorial decisions. Sources of full or partial funding or other support for the research must be declared. For more information please see www.icmje.org.
All studies conducted on human subjects or animals should be approved by the ethics committee or the institutional review board of the institution where the study was performed. When reporting experiments on human subjects, authors should indicate whether the procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional and national). When reporting experiments on animals, authors should indicate whether the institutional and national guidelines for the care and use of laboratory animals were followed (see ICMR guidelines: icmr.nic.in/ethics_SOP.pdf and icmr.nic.in/animal_ethics.htm).
Proofs of articles, prior to their publication, are provided to authors. These will be sent either by email or electronically. The authors may make only the necessary minor corrections at this stage and should answer any queries marked for their attention. The proofs should be returned, after corrections and answering all queries, within 2 days on the journal website. A delay in returning proofs may lead to a delay in publication.
Based on the comments of reviewers and in conformity with the policies of the Journal, manuscripts found unsuitable for publication will be rejected. The corresponding author will be informed of the rejection, and comments of the reviewers, if relevant, will be provided. The manuscript will not be returned.
The Editor
The National Medical Journal of India
All India Institute of Medical Sciences
New Delhi 110029, INDIA
Tel: 91-11-26588802, 26588500 (Ext 3486) Fax: 91-11-26588663
Email: nmji@nmji.in
Website: www.nmji.in
Publication/Processing Fee
Article Processing Charge
The Journal does not charge the authors or authors’ institutions for the submission, processing and/or publications of manuscripts.Copyright and Open Access Statement
All of the content published in the The National Medical Journal of India is protected under the International copyright law, defined by Creative Commons and International Council of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE). The author of an article retains the academic copyright of the content and can self-archive the article. The journal retains the commercial rights of the published content and publisher executes the commercial rights on behalf of the journal. The journal also grants to all readers and users a free, irrevocable, global, perpetual right of access to, and a license to copy, use, distribute and display the content publicly and to make and distribute derivative works in any digital medium for any reasonable and non-commercial purpose, subject to proper attribution of authorship and ownership of the copyrights under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International Public License.
Click here to view sample copyright form
(Please note submission portal (EditorialAssist) will provide an option to generate the copyright form online while submitting the manuscript)
Open Access Publication and Creative Commons Licensing
The National Medical Journal of India is an open-access journal, and manuscripts published are distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-Share Alike 4.0 License (CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0), which allows others to remix, transform, and build upon the work non-commercially, as long as appropriate credit is given and the new creations are licensed under the identical terms.
Compliance with Funder-Mandated Open Access Policies
An author whose work is funded by an organization that mandates the use of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 4.0 License is able to meet that requirement through the available open-access license for approved funders.
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